UNC's Paige happy with college decision

Saturday

Mar 22, 2014 at 12:01 AMMar 22, 2014 at 11:25 PM

Adam Smith

SAN ANTONIO – The home-state connections are ever-present today in the NCAA Tournament for North Carolina point guard Marcus Paige.

The Tar Heels take on Iowa State, the Big 12 Conference school that started recruiting him as a freshman in high school and is located in Ames, about a two-hour drive from where he grew up in Marion. Paige has been flooded with text messages and tweets since the East Regional was unveiled and friends linked the corresponding bracket lines to a potential pairing between North Carolina and the Cyclones.

And his parents actually have been harboring an Iowa State student / fan in their hotel room here in this city. Jack Halupnik is one of Paige’s closest friends from Linn-Mar High School. He hasn’t been too mouthy or overly decked out in Iowa State gear yet, Paige said.

But who knows what the intensity of today’s game, the fervor of March Madness and a trip to the Sweet Sixteen could mean. Right?

“I told him, if he’s coming and he’s on my ticket, he’s wearing Carolina blue,” Paige said Saturday, laughing. “He said it’s a win-win situation for him, because if we win then he gets to follow one of his best friends. If they win, his team gets to keep going.”

Paige said Iowa State showed him recruiting interest as early as any other potential suitor. Greg McDermott, now the Creighton coach, was in charge then. When Fred Hoiberg took the Iowa State job, he made sure to contact Paige within a couple of days.

“I was really close with him and liked what he was doing, liked some of the guys he had coming in,” said Paige, whose AAU team often practiced at Iowa State.

Ultimately, his final college decision came down to either North Carolina or Kansas. His third and fourth choices were Virginia and Iowa, so it’s not like he spurned Iowa State by picking Tar Heels when he was a McDonald’s All-American. Paige said when he began immersing himself in college basketball, Raymond Felton’s running of North Carolina’s up-tempo style drew him toward the Tar Heels. Later, Ty Lawson and Kendall Marshall – both of whom wore jersey No. 5, as Paige does – took the team’s reins and he was hooked.

“It was hard not to fall in love with the way Carolina played. It’s hard not to be partial to that,” he said. “Then they offered me a scholarship, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can turn this down.’ ”

As for today’s matchup, Paige said he has taken particular notice of Iowa State’s status as a trendy pick among bracketologists to reach the Final Four. The very reason he left the Midwest for Tobacco Road, he said, was the chance to compete at that type of elite level with North Carolina.

“It adds an extra dynamic to the game,” he said. “It makes it more meaningful to me, at least, simply because I don’t want to go home and have to hear about how I left the state and then a team from my state put us out of the tournament.”